1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method of and an apparatus for preparing multi-composed images by laying out identical images.
2. Description of the Related Art
Boxes and vessels made of paper sheets are called `paper ware`. In many cases, various image are printed on the surface of a paper ware such as a photograph or illustration of a product, a trade name, and a bar code. In the process of color printing of images on paper wares, plural copies of a development view of the paper ware are laid out on an image plane corresponding to a photosensitive material, such as a presensitized plate, and respective color separation images are exposed from halftone films on the photosensitive material to produce printing plates for plural color inks. The reason why the development view of a paper ware is laid out in a multi-composing manner is that the development view is relatively small in general and that it is thus uneconomical to print only one image of the paper ware on a printing plate.
Photocomposers are conventionally used to lay out and expose a plurality of identical images on a photosensitive material. The photocomposer successively locates one original film, on which an original image of a paper ware is recorded, at each image position of multi-duplication and expose the original image on a photosensitive material at each image position, thereby recording a plurality of multi-composed images on one photosensitive material.
Recent advancement of computer technology enables an image, which is to be printed on a paper ware, to be prepared by an image processing system. This technology does not require the original film, but can prepare an original image with an image processing system and record image data representing the original image in a storage medium. Since the conventional method of preparing multi-composed images of a paper ware, however, expose an image on an original film on a photosensitive material, it is required to prepare an original film from the image data generated by the image processing system and expose multi-composed images with a photocomposer. Similar problems also arise in the process of preparing multi-composed images of labels.